This particular KGB man arrived in September 1997. He was found out in 2002. So Mikhail Lennikov said he was a refugee. He failed to convince the Immigration and Refugee Board of that, in May 2006. So he appealed. In June 2009, the Honourable Mr. Justice Russel Zinn of the Federal Court of Canada upheld the deportation order. The same judge, on June 4, 2009, ruled Ottawa must return Abousfian Abdelrazik from Sudan, a decision applauded by those who otherwise studiously ignore his contemporaneous decision in this KGB man's case. Justice Zinn wrote: "The applicant has had the benefit of every procedure available to him under the Act. At some point, a deportation order must be carried out otherwise the integrity of the process is called into question." He also cited Mr. Justice Evans: "…the balance of convenience does not favour delaying further the discharge of either the applicant's duty…to leave Canada immediately, or the Minister's duty to remove them as soon as reasonably practicable…This is not simply a question of administrative convenience, but implicates the integrity, and fairness of, and public confidence, in Canada's system of immigration control." The applicant's duty was to leave. Instead he decamped into a pre-prepared suite in Vancouver's First Lutheran Church, asserting a right of sanctuary. There is no such thing. The Honourable Vic Toews, Minister of Public Safety, is responsible for the Canada Border Services Agency. On Jan. 28, 2010, he insisted: "The Immigration and Refugee Board and the courts have determined that Mr. Lennikov is not admissible to Canada under our laws." He has done little since. Supposedly, Conservatives favour a law-and-order agenda. Yet, someone openly defying our laws remains untroubled. Recently Harper's government circulated descriptions of alleged war criminals, encouraging snitches to help the Canada Border Security Agency deport bad guys (a few were). Since this KGB man's whereabouts are known why wasn't he removed? The Conservatives also cater to ethnic communities. More than 1.2 million Canadians are of Ukrainian heritage, many thousands more are of other eastern European origins, and more than a few have family members who suffered persecution by the Communist secret police, known variously as the CHEKA, NKVD, SMERSH, and KGB. Some victims were even Lutherans. Giving 'Captain KGB' the boot would earn "ethnic votes." Supporters plead this former Soviet agent should stay because he is a well-educated family man and Mozart aficionado who only worked as a translator. They argue he poses no security threat since the U.S.S.R. collapsed more than two decades ago. Would they rally behind someone with a PhD who treasured Tchaikovsky and was 'only' a Russian-language translator while in the Gestapo or SS? Not likely. Simply being part of an organization that perpetrated crimes against humanity, even if you were 'only' a cook, bottle washer, or translator, renders you inadmissible. All KGB veterans fit that description. That's Canadian law, like it or not. Of course our KGB man is a white European. Most other n'erdo- wells being hunted down are Third Worlders. And although Communists are atheists by definition, this one was clever enough to steal away into a church. Since the remarkably delicate souls of the CBSA won't enter a place of worship to do their jobs, God forbid any of Canada's other most wanted read this. Any law-breaker who absconds into a mosque, synagogue, or temple can apparently chortle home free! Offering citizenship to KGB or Gestapo veterans is unconscionable. And Canadians want federal laws upheld. Yet that's not happening. Deploying the usual remedies — chiding Ministers, sending protest cards to MPs, alerting the media — has had little consequence. The taxpayer- funded CBC even broadcast reports sympathetic to this bogus refugee claimant and illegal alien, obfuscating the KGB's murderous role. Those claiming there's no left-wing bias at the CBC must be joking. So we hired a private investigator and put this KGB man's bolthole under surveillance. If he leaves, the authorities will be alerted immediately and will deport him. Alternatively, he can spend the rest of his days in his hidey-hole at First Lutheran. That's fine with us. Some hint that this once loyal servant and beneficiary of the Soviet regime "found God" in their midst. How nice, if true. As Christians we might have "turned the other cheek" if there was credible evidence this KGB man genuinely sought forgiveness for what he was, made public his repentance. He hasn't. So we say: "No wolf in sheep's clothing will ever be welcome in the flock."

Lubomyr Luciuk, PhD, is director of research for the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (www.uccla.ca)

Concerned over the failure of the Canada Border Services Agency to remove a known veteran of the notorious Soviet secret police, the KGB, from Canada, the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association today announced that it has engaged the services of a private investigation firm to put a Lutheran church basement in east Vancouver under surveillance:

"According to the Minister of Public Security, the Honourable Vic Toews, this KGB man had no right to enter Canada, and he has no right to remain. He is not a refugee, as confirmed by the Immigration and Refugee Board. His appeal of that finding was dismissed by the Honourable Mr. Justice R. Zinn of the Federal Court of Canada. He should have been removed immediately, but he claimed 'sanctuary' in a pre-prepared bolt-hole in a church basement, even though no 'right of sanctuary' exists in Canadian law. He remains there to this day, nearly three years later, openly defying our country's laws. Repeated calls upon the Government of Canada to enforce the decisions of both the IRB and the Federal Court of Canada have not been acted upon. As a result, we have begun another campaign calling upon Mr. Toews to instruct the CBSA to do their job while letting all MPs and Senators in Parliament know about what needs to be done and why. Until this KGB man is returned to his country of origin, we are placing the site under surveillance. If he attempts to leave his cellar, he will be apprehended and turned over to the RCMP/CBSA.

"It's troubling that the enforcement of Canada's laws is being left to concerned citizens. But this man was a part of the Soviet apparatus, a willing and promoted enabler of a corrupt, undemocratic and violently ruthless secret police force. We must, at a minimum, ensure that the freedoms we enjoy in Canada are shared with the tens of thousands of real refugees who wish to come here."

"Today is an appropriate day for recalling the many millions of people who came to Canada fleeing oppression in their homelands, who then made this country their own, and whose descendants have contributed so much to the creation of an inclusive, welcoming and democratic society here.

"Whether they were east Europeans fleeing Communist tyranny, or Vietnamese, Chinese, Cambodians, Tibetans and others escaping similarly oppressive regimes in East Asia, Canada has been enriched by those who came here seeking, and finding, freedom. We hope that the new national museums, namely the Canadian Museum of Immigration (Pier 21) in Halifax, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) (Winnipeg) will pay particular tribute to these heroic people, victims of Communism, who never gave up the hope that someday their homelands would be free, continue to struggle to secure that end, but who, in the meantime, have given so much of themselves to building up a prosperous Canada.

"Their suffering, their endurance, their dreams and their triumphs must be the central stories told in our national museums."

The image in the ad, duplicated on the postcard, is from the cover of the 1947 Ukrainian-language edition of George Orwell'sAnimal Farm. Most copies were confiscated by the American Occupation authorities in Germany and turned over to the Soviets, along with hundreds of thousands of "Soviet Citizens" forcibly repatriated under the terms of the now-notorious Yalta Agreement. Many were survivors and witnesses to the genocidal Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine, a tragedy now known as the Holodomor.

Text on back of postcard:The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is a taxpyer-funded national museum. Its 12 galleries should all be inclusive, comparative and thematic in their treatment of the many crimes against humanity that have befouled human history — before, during and since the Second World War.

Instead, two communities are being given privileged, permanent and prominent exhibit spaces, elevating the horrors suffered by a few above all the others.

That's unfair. That's unacceptable. Partiality shouldn't be funded from the public purse.

When will those in charge understand that a federally funded NATIONAL museum in Winnipeg, to be paid for by TAXPAYERS in PERPETUITY, must be equal to all Canadians, and cannot provide privileged space to one or two groups in Canada at the expense of all others?

The following is from the Wednesday Nov. 17, 2010, edition of EMBASSY magazine, page 8, by the UCCLA’s Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk

Harper stands tall on Ukraine’s HolodomorLubomyr Luciuk

I witnessed an odd event recently. A foreign statesman stood mourning genocide victims in the country where the crime occurred while its president ignored the ceremony, insisting there was no genocide.

On Oct. 25, Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, showed respect for Ukraine’s dead. Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s president, did not. Reportedly, he has never entered the Kyiv museum to the Holodomor, the great famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine.

Yet Mr. Yanukovych’s behaviour was all but ignored while Mr. Harper’s words became the story. When he said “almost” 10 million people starved, roughly Canada’s population in 1933, his critics accused him of poppycock. Scything several million off the death toll, they insisted only a few million perished, a lesser booboo.

Scholarly estimates of Holodomor-related deaths do vary. A credible study by Jacques Vallin, one of France’s leading demographers, concluded that 2.6 million died of hunger. To this he added a crisis birth deficit of 1.1 million and about a million more transported to the Gulag: 4.6 million lives lost to Soviet Ukraine over a year.

Even this conservative figure places the Holodomor alongside the Shoah as one of history’s greatest crimes against humanity. From a Canadian perspective, think of everyone in Toronto starving between today and next Thanksgiving. Or use Professor Robert Conquest’s calculation of 17 people dying every minute, 25,000 per day at the famine’s height, and reflect on how 17 men, women and children died of hunger between the time you began this article and got to this line. At that rate of mortality, my hometown of Kingston would be emptied of souls in a week.

Every serious student of the Soviet Union accepts that a famine occurred in 1932-1933, a consequence of Communist policies, not a bad harvest, and that millions could have been saved but were instead left to die.

But was it genocide? Given the blockade of Soviet Ukraine’s borders to prevent aid coming in, or anyone leaving, the significant grain exports that continued despite official knowledge of catastrophic famine conditions, the wholesale confiscation of all foodstuffs from Ukrainian lands, and how the Soviets and their shills orchestrated a campaign of Holodomor-denial for decades, the answer is certainly yes.

In Stalin’s Genocides, Stanford professor Norman Naimark writes: “The bottom line is that Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich and their ilk were convinced that the Ukrainian peasants as a group were ‘enemies of the people’ who deserved to die. That was enough for the Soviet leadership; that should be enough to conclude that the Ukrainian famine was genocide.”

Raphael Lemkin, the father of the UN Genocide Convention, thought so too. In 1953 he spoke of this famine as part of a genocidal Soviet campaign targeting the Ukrainian nation. Given Yanukovych’s servile catering to the Kremlin’s Holodomor-denying yarn, I might have quit Ukraine in despair but for an encounter at a popular Ukrainian-cuisine restaurant.

A young mother and daughter, visiting from France, were taking lunch with an eight-year-old lad, their Kyiv cousin. We shared a table. The boy was practicing French but, overhearing us, tried his English.

I asked what he wanted to do: “Study at Cambridge!” What subjects? “History and mathematics.” Had he been abroad? “Yes, to Paris.“ Which city did he prefer? “Both are nice but I’ll take Kyiv. I’m Ukrainian, after all.”

I’d bet he gets to Cambridge. There’s hope. No matter what Moscow’s men still attempt, millions of Ukrainians are now living, working and studying abroad. More leave daily. Some will learn Ukraine’s history better in the diaspora than they are today permitted to in their own homeland. Many will return and won’t be fooled again.

So Mr. Yanukovych is slated for the dustbin of history while Mr. Harper can stand proud. He placed Canada in the ranks of the righteous few among nations who recognize the Holodomor as genocide and thus confound those who won’t — the perpetrators and their issue, who remain unclean, perhaps forevermore. Lubomyr Luciuk is a professor at the Royal Military College of Canada and co-editor of Holodomor: Reflections on the Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine. editor@embassymag.ca

The above article is a follow up to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s two-day visit to Ukraine in late October, and the range of articles which followed. Here’s a short roundup: